It’s time that the Illinois High School Association brought the state basketball championships to Rockford. Or Aurora. Or DeKalb. Or Carbondale. Or anywhere besides Peoria and Champaign.

Peoria has done a fine job hosting the state basketball championships since 1996, just as Champaign did a fine job hosting the tournament for 77 years before then.

It’s the state’s tournament, however, and shouldn’t be confined to one or two cities.

Peoria’s contract with the IHSA expires after the 2015 tournament. The IHSA should consider revamping the tournament and rotating it among various cities across the state.

Doing so would help revive a tournament that has been losing its luster. The Peoria Journal Star reports that initial IHSA estimates for tickets sold during the Class 1A-2A finals March 14-15 was about 28,000 for four sessions, leaving an average of more than 4,000 tickets unsold per session in 11,164-capacity Carver Arena.

Those numbers represent tickets sold, not actual attendance. Actual attendance appeared to be less than 7,000 each session. As recently as 2009, 37,912 tickets were sold for the Class 1A-2A weekend.

Playing in front of a bunch of empty seats takes away from the experience of playing in a state championship. Successful teams are used to playing in packed gyms during the regular season and the playoffs. A packed house adds excitement to the game as players feed off of fan enthusiasm.

One of the reasons the tournament was moved from Champaign was that there were plenty of empty seats in 16,000-seat Assembly Hall (now the State Farm Center). Moving games to a more intimate setting — for example, Rockford’s BMO Harris Bank Center, which has about 7,000 seats — would create a better atmosphere for players and fans alike.

It would be easy for us to advocate for a long-term contract between the IHSA and Rockford. The revamped Ingersoll building, the proposed Gorman hotel and convention center and other downtown amenities would provide plenty of facilities for players and fans when they weren’t in the BMO Center.

But giving other Illinois cities a chance would allow casual fans who don’t want to travel great distances an opportunity to see the state’s top high school basketball talent — talent that often makes it to the professional ranks.

The National Football League does it right. Cities bid to host the Super Bowl. There have been 48 Super Bowls, and 22 different stadiums have hosted or are scheduled to host the big game.

It’s a big deal for your city to be chosen to host a Super Bowl — just as it would be a big deal for any Illinois city to host the state basketball championships.

Page 2 of 2 - We get that the IHSA prefers a central location to host the games, but we think that concern is overrated. If your team makes it to the state finals, it doesn’t matter much if you have to drive two hours or five. You’re probably going to spend a night in a hotel either way.

Besides, the IHSA has shown a central location is not always necessary. The 2013 football championships were at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, which will host the state finals during odd-numbered years. The finals are at the U of I in Champaign in even years.

While IHSA officials discuss a change in venue, they also should discuss changing the four-class system. Expanding from two classes to four has diminished rather than increased interest. There are no good Cinderella stories — think “Hoosiers” — anymore.

Peoria officials probably are working on a proposal to keep the hoopla in central Illinois, although our colleagues at the Journal Star report that enthusiasm appears to be waning. The tournament is not a shiny-new experience for Peorians anymore.

But it would be for Rockfordians or Aurorans or residents of almost every city in the state. It’s worth a shot.